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Additions and amendments to the site FAQ.

ABCs of i2p

duck: section for the curious but unknowing potential users. shouldnt be too technical, just the first X questions that get asked by those not having used I2P before. I hate the title newbie though, too derogative

Why do I need I2P?

Privacy, a central tenet of human rights, is seeing a rapid erosion around the world as goverments, in league with big media, seek to infringe privacy in the interests of suppressing copyight infringement. The Hadopi Law in France, the Digital Economies Act in the UK and the proposed firewall in Australia are but 3 examples of increasingly repressive legislation that undermines vital freedoms. In addition, repressive governments that seek to censor the internet and punish those that attempt to express themselves politically are also looking to gain even more control over the internet, and their citizens by extension. If you're a whistleblower or political dissident, the case for I2P is clear. If you're an "average Joe", the freedoms you take for granted today may well be lost tomorrow. Be in no doubt, free flow of information requires your active participation, and by running I2P you're not only helping youself but also others who may have their freedom threatened. If you want to preserve the notion of online privacy, running I2P should be a no-brainer!

I've heard of Tor. What's different about I2P? Should I use both?

I2P and Tor are both anonymizing tools that run on a variety of platforms, and serve the interests of similar users. Where Tor sees its primary role as a platform for circumventing censorship on the net at large and providing the tools to evade direct monitoring by governments, ISPs etc, I2P takes a slightly different approach. Where Tor creates a two-tier system of clients and relay nodes, I2P by default puts every user in the role of both client *and* relay. However, unlike Tor, by running I2P there is no risk of takedown notices or worse, since I2P keeps all the traffic hidden and encrypted end-to-end. Tor facilitates access to the net at large, and therefore exposes itself, and its users, to some risk of monitoring and legal intervention. Since everything in I2P happens within I2P, there is no risk of external monitoring by ISP's or governments. In this sense, Tor is more a conventional proxy onto the net at large, whereas I2P is a darknet implementation.

Is my router an "exit node" to the regular Internet? I don't want it to be.

You're confusing Tor and I2P! By default, everyone on the network participates in the network to help route traffic for other I2P users. We do not configure an "outproxy" on a default installation, so the only traffic a default I2P installation will route will be for other I2P routers (nodes) within the network, encrypted and anonymous by design.

What is syndie and is it still active?

I have a question!

Dig In - Technical Aspect

duck: section for those who have tried I2P, and are interested in the internals / limits, etc.

powerusers but NOT developers.

What crypto is used?

How does I2P bootstrap?

RN: this question popped up in #-2p-help, and the person asking did not wait long enough for an answer, it expands the question above, and is probably too long but I put it here to illustrate what new i2people want to know… and I'll answer it as best I can..

how do the I2Prouters find each other? In public routing there are HELLO packets like in OSPF - but i don't know how it works in a virtual net… read something about garlic routing, but there is no explanation about " how the router find eachother in detail" there must be a central instance which is the first point of contact, or ?

RN: When a new i2p router first starts up, it contacts sites that distribute some initial 'seeds' These are information about other routers and are stored in your netDB. They expire after a while, so that's why i2p does not ship with default seeds installed. Once your router has been running a while, it gets information about other routers that it connects to (through the ones it already knows) and stores those as well, this is why your Known-Peers number displayed in the console goes up over time; and why, if your internet connection goes down, the number goes down since it gets no response from each router it tries to contact.

jrandom, the original developer of I2P, had to disappear for reasons unknown. Since the original i2p.net domain was registered by him, and he never left a forwarding address, it was impossible to take control of the domain, and so i2p2.de was born.

What do you mean by "no trusted parties"?

Do I need to mess with my router to get I2P to work? Do I need to port forward to participate?

Dig in - Non Technical Aspect

Paranoid

How can I be sure I'm not being spied on?

Do they know I will be running I2P? Is running I2P illegal?

Is using an outproxy safe? (What are these inproxies and outproxies?)

Inproxies are programms/websites which allows an user from the regular internet have a look into the anonymous network of I2P. So … the opposite of this is an outproxy. An Outproxy allows you to visit websites of the regular internet through the anonymous network of I2P. Is it safe? It depends on what you are doing with that. Never use an unsecure connection (http w/out "s") to send privat data like username with passwords. The operator of an outproxy can log your informatione if he wants to do that. You don't know what happens with your information which leaves the I2P net through an outproxy. In I2P your connections are safe with encryption of your data. At the outproxy your information will be decrypted and send out unencrypted to the regular internet.

Steganography rants

Political / Ethical / Philosphical

Isn't I2P encouraging copyright infringement?

Criminal Activity (snuff/bestiality/cp/terrorism etc)

I am opposed to certain types of content. How do I keep from distributing, storing, or accessing them?

Although I2P and Freenet share some characteristics, in I2P you are never obligated to store encrypted files for other users on the network; this is a Freenet feature. In terms of accesssing dubious content, the same rules apply as on the net at large: process with caution!

In Operation

FAQ of FAQ

I'm missing lots of hosts in my addressbook. What are some good subscription links?

I2P is running, but I can't get to my gmail (or other regular websites) .. (​https://)

I2P out of the box provides a web proxy (what we call an outproxy in I2P terminology) to the web at large. Intended for casual, occasional use, this proxy only supports unencrypted traffic, so any website such as gmail that requires an ​https:// connection will fail. If your proxying needs are more than occasional, we recommend you use Tor in conjunction with I2P to facilitate better access to the web.

Configuration

How can I access the web console from my other machines or password protect it?

How can I use applications from my other machines?

How do I startup I2P automatically on boot time?

Just open your router console at ​http://127.0.0.1:7657/index.jsp and click left on I2P services. On the right frame you see a new menu bar. There's a link to "Service" - click it. Now scroll down in the right frame to to section "Run on startup". In this section you press the button "Run I2P on startup". If you get some errors after boot with a Windows system, disbaled it with the same procedure but pressing the "Don't run I2p o startup" button. Now you can try to put your Windows Startmenu Link of I2P "Start I2P (no window)" in the Autostartsection of your Windows. This should work.
*squeezeIt: PLZ add for Linux systems if desired.

I2Apps

duck: I dont think these should be part of the I2P core FAQ.

Bittorrent / I2PSnark / Azureus I2P Plugin Questions?

WTF is all this noise about Seedless?

I've heard a rumor of something called I2FS. What is it?

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is weird! What is a changate? Who is Fox? Who is CIA?